And he has the benefit of learning his faith from a man, Polycarp of Smyrna, who knew the Beloved Disciple personally.
You were there????
_______________________________________________
If he had the Scriptures in his hand and actually read them ...
A moment ago you were touting him as a proto-Protestant and a devotee of sola scriptura
No, I wasn't. I was touting him as one of your holy fathers, one of the patriarchs of your holy "tradition" whose writings you place above those of Scripture when it is convenient for you, but just cast aside when they become inconvenient.
____________________________________
and now you think didn't have the Scriptures or didn't bother to read them? A bit fickle of you, I'd say.
The fickleness belongs to he who claims to believe in the "written documents" except when those "viva voces" of magisterial tradition arise to overrule them.
________________________________
Most of the Church in his day and later did say "that he was dead wrong" --- by their actions day after day, by ignoring not only what he said in that regard, but also in ignoring the pontifications of presbyters of the Church of Rome in favor of their own presbyters and Scripture itself.
You were there?
Just like you were there with Polycarp!!!
Where is the evidence for that belief? And I'm not talking about the obvious "reformers", because it seems to me you are claiming that contemporaries of St. Irenaeus, and later, all the way up to the "Reformation" (not just starting with it), were saying he was wrong about the supremacy of the Church of Rome. So where is the evidence for that, as Claud asked, where are the ECF's writings that demonstrate that that notion was prevailant, and popular, as you suggest, a good 1000 years before the "Reformation"?